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2 Living rooms became rehearsal spaces, old bangers transported props, costumes came from second-hand shops, sets were extracted from junk yards, they called on mates to help out, everyone learning on the job, ad hoc, throwing their lot in together they wrote grant applications on old typewriters with missing keys, budgets felt as alien to Amma as quantum physics, she balked at becoming trapped behind a desk she upset Dominique when she arrived for admin sessions late and left early claiming headaches or PMT they rowed when she walked into a stationery shop and ran straight out again claiming it had brought on a panic attack she had a go at Dominique when she didn't deliver the script she'd promised to write but was out late night clubbing instead, or forgot her lines mid-show six months after its inception, they were constantly at loggerheads they'd hit it off as friends, only to find they couldn't work together Amma called a make-or-break meeting at hers they sat down with wine and a Chinese takeaway and Dominique admitted she got more pleasure setting up tours for the company than putting herself in front of an audience, and preferred being herself to pretending to be other people Amma admitted she loved writing, hated admin and was she really any good as an actor? she did anger brilliantly – which was the extent of her range Dominique became the company manager, Amma the artistic director they employed actresses, directors, designers, stage crews, set up national tours that lasted months

their plays, The Importance of Being Female, FGM: The Musical, Dis- arranged Marriage, Cunning Stunts, were performed in community centres, libraries, fringe theatres, at women's festivals and conferences they leafleted outside venues as audiences left and arrived, illegally plastered posters on to billboards in the dead of night they started getting reviews in the alternative media, and even produced a monthly Bush Women samizdat but due to pathetically poor sales and, to be honest, pathetically poor writing, it lasted for two issues after its grand launch one summer's evening at Sisterwrite where a group of women rolled up to enjoy the free plonk and spill out on to the pavement to light up and chat each other up Amma supplemented her income working in a burger bar at Piccadilly Circus where she sold hamburgers made of reconstituted cardboard topped with rehydrated onions and rubbery cheese all of which she also ate for free in her breaks – which gave her spots the orange nylon suit and hat she wore meant customers saw her as a uniformed servant to do their bidding and not her wonderful, artistic, highly individualistic and rebellious self she slipped free crusty pies filled with apple-flavoured lumps of sugar to the runaway rent boys she befriended who operated around the station with no idea that in years to come she'd be attending their funerals they didn't realize unprotected sex meant a dance with death nobody did home was a derelict factory in Deptford with concrete walls, a collapsing ceiling and a community of rats that defeated all attempts at extermination thereafter she moved into a series of similarly squalid squats until she found herself living in the most desirable squat in the whole of London, a Soviet-sized former office block at the back of King's Cross she was lucky enough to be one of the first to hear of it before it filled up and stayed upstairs when bailiffs set a hydraulic excavator at the main door which triggered violent countermeasures and prison sentences for the head-bangers who thought a bailiff down deserved a good kicking

they called it the Battle of King's Cross the building was thereafter known as the Republic of Freedomia they were lucky, too, because the owner of the property, a certain Jack Staniforth, living tax-free in Monte Carlo, loaded from the profits of his family's business in Sheffield cutlery, turned out to be sympathetic to their cause once news reached him from his estate holding company he'd fought for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a bad-investment of a building in one of London's seediest districts was a forgettable footnote to his accounts if they looked after the place, he wrote they could stay for free they stopped the illegal tapping of electricity and opened an account with the London Electricity Board likewise with the gas, hitherto powered by a single fifty pence piece jammed into a meter they needed to set up a management system and gathered one Saturday morning in the lobby to thrash it out the Marxists demanded they set up a Central Committee of the Workers' Republic of Freedomia, which was a bit rich, Amma thought, seeing as most of them had taken 'a principled stand against the running dogs of capitalism' as an excuse to not work the hippies suggested they form a commune and share everything, but they were so chilled and laid back, everybody talked over them the environmentalists wanted to ban aerosols, plastic bags and deodorant, which turned everyone against them, even the punks who weren't exactly known for smelling minty the vegetarians demanded a non-meat policy, the vegans wanted it extended to non-dairy, the macrobiotics suggested everyone eat steamed white cabbage for breakfast the Rastas wanted cannabis legalized, and a reserved plot on the land out back for their Nyabinghi gatherings the Hari Krishnas wanted everyone to join them that very afternoon banging drums down Oxford Street the punks wanted permission to play shouty music and were duly shouted down

the gay guys wanted anti-homophobic legislation enshrined into the building's constitution, to which everyone replied, what constitution? the radical feminists wanted women-only quarters, self-governed by a co- op the lesbian radical feminists wanted their own quarters away from the non-lesbian radical feminists, also self-governed by a co-op the black radical lesbian feminists wanted the same except with the condition that no whiteys of any gender were allowed inside the anarchists walked out because any form of governance was a betrayal of everything they believed in Amma preferred running solo, and mixing with others who didn't try to impose their will on anyone else in the end a straightforward rotating management committee was formed with various rules against drug-dealing, sexual harassment and voting Tory the plot out back became a communal space featuring scrap metal sculptures courtesy of the artists Amma managed to lay claim to a typing pool so large she could jog around it with its own private toilet and sink that she kept blissfully clean and suffused with floral scents she coated the walls and ceiling with a striking blood-red paint, ripped up the corporate-grey carpet, threw a few raffia mats on the wooden floor, installed a second-hand cooker, fridge, bean bags, a futon, and a bath reclaimed from a junk yard her room was big enough for parties and big enough for people to crash the disco beats of Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, Minnie Riperton and Chaka Khan swirling on vinyl got her parties going Roberta, Sarah, Edith, Etta and Mathilde Santing were the soundtracks to her end of night seductions behind the eighteenth-century black lacquer Chinese screen, rescued from a skip outside the old Chinese Embassy she worked her way through many of the women of Freedomia she wanted one-night stands, most wanted more than that

it got to the point where she dreaded passing her former conquests in the corridors, like Maryse, a translator from Guadeloupe if she wasn't knocking on Amma's door in the middle of the night begging to be let in, she was lurking outside it to harass whoever was getting what she wanted this progressed to name-calling from her window whenever she saw Amma approach the building, all of it coming to a head when she tipped a bucket of vegetable peel over Amma one day as she passed beneath her window infuriating both the environmentalists and the management committee who took it upon themselves to write to Amma that she 'stop shitting on her own doorstep' Amma wrote back how it was interesting that quickly people turned into totalitarian fascists once they'd been given a little power but she'd learned her lesson and wasn't short of attention; groupies queued up for Amma and Dominique as the main players of Bush Women Theatre everyone from baby dykes in their late teens to women who could be their mothers Amma didn't discriminate, she bragged to her friends that her tastes were truly egalitarian as they traversed culture, class, creed, race, religion and generation which, happily, gave her a bigger playing field than most (she kept her predilection for big tits quiet because it was un-feminist to isolate body parts for sexual objectification) Dominique was more selective and monogamous, serially so, she went for actresses, usually blonde, whose microscopic talent was overshadowed by their macroscopic beauty or models whose looks were their talent women-only bars were their hangouts Fallen Angel, Rackets, the Bell, the Drill Hall Theatre bar on a Monday where the lesbianarati hung out, and Pearl's shebeen in Brixton on a Friday night run by Pearl, a middle-aged Jamaican woman who stripped her basement of furniture, set up a sound system and charged at the door

Amma experienced commitment to one person as imprisonment, she hadn't left home for a life of freedom and adventure to end up chained to another person's desires if she slept with a woman more than two or three times, they usually went from attractively independent to increasingly needy within the space of a week she'd become their sole source of happiness as they moved to assert their authority over her autonomy, by any means necessary sulks, tears, accusations of selfishness and heartlessness Amma learnt to head all women off, to state her intentions upfront, to never sleep with the same person twice, or pushing it, thrice even when she wanted to sex was a simple, harmless, human pleasure and until her late thirties she got a lot of it how many were there? one hundred, another fifty? surely not more than that? a couple of friends suggested she try therapy to help her settle down, she replied she was practically a virgin compared to male rock stars who boasted conquests of thousands and were admired for it did anyone tell them to go and get psychoanalysed? unfortunately one or two of her earlier conquests have been harassing her on social media of late where the past is just waiting to smack you in the face like the woman who posted that Amma had been her first when they slept together thirty-five years ago and had been so trashed she vomited all over her it was so traumatic I never got over it, she wailed or the woman who chased her up Regent Street shouting at her for not returning her calls from around the same time who do you think you are, you pretentious show-off theatre luvvie? you're nothing, that's what you are, nothing you must be off your meds, love, Amma shouted back, before escaping into the subterranean warren of Topshop Amma long ago lost interest in bed-hopping; over time she began to crave the intimacy that comes from being emotionally, although not exclusively, close to another person

non-monogamous relationships are her thing, or is it called polyamory now? as Yazz describes it, which as far as she can tell is non-monogamy in all but name, child there's Dolores, a graphic designer based in Brighton, and Jackie, an occupational therapist in Highgate they've been in the picture seven and three years respectively and are both independent women who have full lives (and children) outside of their relationship with her they're not clingy or needy or jealous or possessive, and they actually like each other so yes, sometimes they indulge in a little ménage à trois upon occasion (Yazz would be horrified if she knew this) the middle-aged Amma sometimes feels nostalgic for her younger days, remembers the only time she and Dominique went on a pilgrimage to the legendary Gateways hidden down a Chelsea basement in the last years of its fifty-year existence it was almost empty, two middle-aged women stood at the bar wearing men's haircuts and suits and looking as if they'd walked straight out of the pages of The Well of Loneliness the dance floor was dimly lit, and two very old and very small women, one in a black suit, the other in a forties-style dress, danced cheek-to-cheek to Dusty Springfield singing 'The Look of Love' and there wasn't even a glittery disco ball spinning from the middle of the ceiling, sprinkling stardust on to them.